The first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season prompted a hurricane warning for much of the North Carolina coast and was expected to make landfall early Friday morning.

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Mark Wilson
/ GETTY IMAGES

Bill Kirk of Ashland Ky. carries his belongings from the beach house he rented, before complying with the mandatory evacuation orders for Hatteras Island, July 3 in Rodanthe, N.C.

RALEIGH, N.C.—The core of Hurricane Arthur is expected to cross over North Carolina’s coast and Outer Banks on Thursday night as a strong Category 2 storm, with wind speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour.

Arthur’s expected path has shifted westward and forecasters have upped their predictions of its strength in the hours of its approach.

The storm’s centre may make landfall between Beaufort and Morehead City, crossing the Pamlico Sound and pounding the barrier islands in the early hours of Friday. Hurricane-force winds may extend nearly 60 kilometres inland, while much of the coast is at risk of storm-surge flooding of nearly a metre.

The Outer Banks evacuation effort was drawing to a close Thursday with the shutdown of Pamlico Sound ferries, though North Carolina Highway 12 remained open to Hatteras Island. Business owners on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands fear Arthur will be the latest and worst of the recent years’ setbacks.

By 6 p.m. the storm was hours away from Wilmington, which it was expected to narrowly miss at 8 p.m. Its arms were so huge that they extended nearly to Asheville and far into Virginia, although its impact will be principally seen in eastern North Carolina.

A military Hurricane Hunter aircraft clocked the storm’s winds at a sustained 144 kilometres per hour on Thursday afternoon, and forecasters expected it to strengthen.

Coastal communities along the entire coast were under a hurricane warning for Thursday and the first part of Friday. Ocracoke Island, Aurora, Pamlico Beach and Belhaven were under voluntary evacuation orders, and authorities ordered a mandatory evacuation of Hatteras Island. Richland Township in Beaufort County also was in mandatory evacuation Thursday afternoon.

Arthur could bring beach-eroding waves, flooding, isolated tornadoes and dangerous rip currents. By 6:30 p.m. its early winds had knocked out power to some 7,300 people in North Carolina.

On Ocracoke, with its voluntary evacuation, people were emptying stores, but locals seemed unfazed by the forecast.

Mark Wilson
/ GETTY IMAGES

Bill Kirk of Ashland Ky. carries his belongings from the beach house he rented, before complying with the mandatory evacuation orders for Hatteras Island, July 3 in Rodanthe, N.C.

“It’s very, very busy,” said Tommy Hutcherson, whose family owns the Ocracoke Variety Store. “There’s a lot of people still on the island.”

In fact, he said, some residents of the island were worried by the number of visitors who planned to ride out the storm on Ocracoke, perhaps encouraged by the evacuation’s voluntary nature.

Ferries transported about 4,300 people off the island on Wednesday and Thursday, although some may have returned. The island’s summertime population is close to 10,000.

The weather will hit hardest overnight Thursday, but forecasters say Arthur will leave a salvageable Fourth of July weekend for hundreds of thousands of beach-bound visitors.

Still, the question is whether those guests will be able to get to the beach when the weather clears. For visitors to Ocracoke and Hatteras, that may depend on whether N.C. 12 is again closed by severe weather.

“Happening in early July, at the heart of the season, that could be devastating economically,” said Scott Leggat, vice president of Seaside Vacations and a longtime Hatteras resident. He was posted up at his office in Kitty Hawk, worried that he’d be cut off if he stayed home in Rodanthe.

Carol Dawson, owner of two motels and a store on Hatteras, had to ask guests from nearly 70 of her units to leave on Thursday morning. All of them want to come back — so she’ll be watching the recovery efforts closely.

“We basically lost the whole weekend,” Dawson said, tallying the potential damage to her businesses at $40,000 (U.S.), depending on the storm’s effects.

She says the state and federal governments have been too lax in caring for island roads and beaches, leaving the Outer Banks vulnerable to heavy economic damage from hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and the closure of Bonner Bridge last year. She estimates at least 30 Hatteras Island businesses, many with long tenures, have closed in the last few years.

“It’s devastating — it’s devastating. I don’t even know another word,” Dawson said, watching the beach from her store. “The money that people were counting on this weekend is going to make the difference between people surviving and not surviving, this weekend. Almost — we feel like it’s this dark cloud over us.”

She planned to stay through the storm. Like many islanders, she’s more worried by its aftermath than its landfall.

By late afternoon, it appeared that those who would leave had left. The island’s remaining population seemed to be longtime locals and media professionals, according to Dawson.

Few people were waiting at the ferry docks along the Hatteras Inlet, and the roads along Hatteras Island were nearly empty.

“This morning, you couldn’t have made a left-hand turn onto N.C. 12,” Leggat said. “Now traffic is just really intermittent.”

As Arthur blew north toward the Carolina border, spreading rain ahead of its accelerating core, McCrory resurrected the plain-spoken advice he gave people before last winter’s storms: “Don’t put your stupid hat on” by waiting too long to leave or being unprepared if you choose to stay.

The storm was about 420 kilometres southwest of Cape Hatteras and moving northeast at 22 kilometres an hour at midday Thursday. Forecasters said it would pick up speed during the day, overnight and on Friday as it bears down on North Carolina and then goes past.

The Department of Transportation, anticipating problems with over-wash and perhaps structural damage to N.C. 12 along Hatteras Island, had staged 25 loaders, graders and other equipment from Ocracoke north to Kill Devil Hills, Secretary Tony Tata said.